On setting goals

It really seems to come around far too quickly, but here we are again and it's less than a month to go until Christmas. It sneaks up on me every year. Just when I think I'm getting organised by getting some presents in advance or by starting to sew my Christmas decorations and gifts, time seems to run away from me and before I know it, there's barely any time at all to do anything.

At the beginning of the year, I set myself some challenges. I've never done this before but since I was going to hit a milestone birthday in January, I thought it would be a good way to focus my year. I was skeptical about doing this. I'm not sure I was even that committed to all the challenges but I put the building blocks in place. Thought through what I wanted to achieve in my life and downloaded a little app, Keep Track Pro (the old version which had the functionality I wanted), to keep track of the numbers and to log when I'd done something towards each challenge. That last bit is important. Having visibility of the numbers and making it really easy to log was key to some of the early successes.

The good news is that I beat my theatre-going goal back in June. I will reach my blogging goal and my making things goal by the end of the year. The fitness and getting into nature goals are about half way there and I'll get a few more sessions in, but they won't be reached, but that's ok. I got part-way towards those goals.

What I've learned about the process is that goal setting can work but you need to do more than just decide to do something. It's important to be clear about the goal, be able to measure it, and, in my case, I shared my goals with some friends so they could help me along the way. I'd go on to say, that I've done rather better with this goal setting than I'd ever anticipated so I'm going to do it again for next year.

I'm still mulling over what the goals should be. I know fitness has to be on there but I need to find a way to make it more enjoyable. And I'd like to include walking again but I think I'm going to get a list of specific walks I want to do and tick those off as I go. I also want creative things to be on there in some shape or form. I'm also going to keep a list of shows attended, but it won't be a goal as such. I think the habit is already ingrained. I'm wondering about making a goal of visiting a specific number of different venues or fringe shows instead of just 'shows' but that may be taking too much on. I'm also going to have the blogging goal in there. 

What I haven't decided on is what work goals I'll set myself. I deliberately didn't set any work goals at the beginning of this year. This experiment wasn't about work success, this was about living more of the life I want to live. But having seen how effective it can be, I'm going to think through what those work goals might be. 

Barcelona and the events I do the week of Mobile World Congress are on the agenda for sure, but I'm mulling over what else would be relevant next year and the year after in terms of events but also some consulting and maybe something else. Who knows? I'm still at the thinking stage.

Do you set goals? Do you use apps to help you with reaching those goals? What works for you?

Day 28/30 NaBloPoMo